In which we explore ways to expand the space between work and sleep ...

Isn't she Spunky?

The mailman is well and truly my friend. When a package comes (fiber, yarn, tools, whatever), he makes the long-ish walk down the driveway to leave it on the porch. I've been home when this happens pretty regularly, so I get a nice big wave as he passes by the picture window. (Note to self - post a picture one day!)

On Thursday, the first installment of my Spunky Club showed up. It's 4 oz. of a beautiful 100% organic merino combed top, handpainted in the colorway "Twilight". I'd managed to resist the siren call of the package for about 24 hours - but last night, I cracked. I opened up the box and braided up the bump.

Pretty, no? The braid somewhat disguises the fact that there are two distinct personalities to this roving - a green one and a red one. When I unbraided it and laid it out this morning for "strategizing", I decided to try and meld the split personality into something more coordinated. It's destined to be a 2-ply, fingering-ish weight yarn. With the help of my scale, I ended up with two bumps that look like this:

Both are approximately 55 grams (overall bump was 110 grams) and that means I should easily get 350+ yards of fingering weight.

I then began splitting the "green" half of the roving and pre-drafting a bit so that I could get started spinning. I'm doing a modified short-draw woolen technique for this stuff. There's a distinct difference in slipperiness as the color changes - anything with a strong color is much firmer; the undyed and lightly dyed sections are absolutely effortless. It's given me food for thought about how I deal with fiber once I start dying my own. So, about halfway through, my bobbin looks like this:

Almost as soon as I started, I remembered that I have one bobbin that I don't like. It slides back and forth on the flyer just a bit and has a bit of chatter. Tensioning this bobbin is finicky. Every time I use it I say to myself, "you should mark that bobbin or something so that you don't use it."